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Monthly Archives: August 2013

This photo and cutline are on the contents page of this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, which has a Clive Thompson piece about Google Glass. He writes after testing the high-tech eyewear: “Only rarely did I accomplish something with Glass that I couldn’t already do with, say, my mobile phone.” || @ThadStarner: “Professor at Georgia Tech; Wearable Computing pioneer; gesture recognition and pattern discovery expert.”

* Paul Lukas is threatened with a lawsuit after telling a sportswear company he has images of its yet-to-be-unveiled uniforms. “Even if I won, as I probably would, the whole thing could end up being a tremendous hassle. So I decided not to post the screen shots, at least for the time being.” (uni-watch.com)* Bob Woodward will teach a journalism class at Yale in the spring semester. (yaledailynews.com) | Carl Bernstein begins teaching at Stony Brook next week. (stonybrook.edu)
* The Onion turns 25. (npr.org) | The Onion gets serious about Syria. (buzzfeed.com) | Earlier: Meet Onion Radio News anchor Doyle Redland. (jimromenesko.com)
* Claim: NAHJ let a politician dictate who sits on a conference panel and who doesn’t. (dailyrepublic.com) | NAHJ: Mistakes were made. (mije.org/richardprince)
* HuffPost Live lays off 20 employees as it closes the Los Angeles office. (theverge.com)
* Mark Russell, who was recently laid off as editor of Tribune’s Orlando Sentinel, has been named Commercial Appeal managing editor. (commercialappeal.com)
* The youngest daily newspaper executive editor in America? George Spohr, 32, will lead the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader’s newsroom. (timesleader.com)
* A 43-year-old journalist who has been on the boy-band beat for a decade tries hard not to look creepy at concerts. (sfgate.com)
* New Orleans newspaper fronts on the 8th anniversary of Katrina: (@kodacohen) | New Orleans Advocate owner has expansion plans. (theadvocate.com)* Penn State’s Daily Collegian put its sex column on hold when the Jerry Sandusky scandal broke, but it’s back this fall with a new name: Dick and Jane. (collegian.psu.edu)
* Why several NFL beat writers left their newspapers to join ESPN. (shermanreport.com)
* “Hyperlocal news goes where traditional media can’t or won’t.” (voiceofsandiego.org)
* “Crossfire” returns to CNN. Why? asks Rem Rieder. (usatoday.com)
* New York Post’s long story about CNBC’s ratings decline has just one sentence about Fox Business’s slide. (nypost.com)
* More than 400 newspaper employees have recently been laid off by Gannett. (gannettblog.blogspot.com)
* “Definitive merger agreement”: Charlotte Observer business reporters put out a press release announcing their engagement. (talkingbiznews.com)
* New York Times story says $295 for a backpack is “a nicely reasonably price.” (Not in Chicago!) (smartertimes.com)

* One reason the Daily Illini no longer has a Friday print edition: Students tend to sleep in that day. (news-gazette.com)
* A single magazine — Game Informer — accounts for almost one-third of all digital subscriptions. (slate.com)
* AOL chief Tim Armstrong creates a job for his former roommate. (allthingsd.com)
* ABC News reopens its bureau in Beirut. (abcnews.go.com)* Rupert Murdoch buys a Los Angeles vineyard after reading about it in his Wall Street Journal. (observer.com)
* The Onion was too tough on CNN, says Andrew Wallenstein. (variety.com)
* Joe Klein and four others are named Fall 2013 Shorenstein Center Fellows. (shorensteincenter.org)
* Charlottesville, Va.-based alt-weekly does a “Snow Fall”-like multimedia feature. (altweeklies.com)
* Eric Wilson feels let down after spending a weekend with the huge September issues of fashion magazines. (nytimes.com)
* Drone-journalism programs seek federal approval to resume flying. (chronicle.com)
* Hamish McKenzie: “BuzzFeed and Medium both have to make their minds up: Platform or publication?” (pandodaily.com)
* RIP: Roger Harris, who worked at the Star-Ledger for 52 years, received an annual greeting card from Hunter S. Thompson. (nj.com)
* There’s a comic book about Melinda Gates’s life. (geekwire.com)

Business Insider’s Nicholas Carlson told the story of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer — the widely praised piece has over 850,000 views — and now BI boss Henry Blodget tells the story of Nicholas Carlson.

Carlson

“Thanks to his training at [Gawker Media’s] Valleywag, Nick had developed a tendency to be snarky, judgmental, and mean — and, worse, he had a reputation for that,” Blodget writes in a memo to his staff. “So when we hired Nick, we knew he would not only have to figure out how to attract readers while being respectful to the people and companies he wrote about, he would also have to rebuild his reputation with sources who had been burned by Valleywag. Over the next three years, Nick did both.”

Blodget’s memo:

Team,

One of the most rewarding parts of my job over the last five years has been watching so many of you develop professionally.

I’ve talked before about how Joe, Gus, Robert, Steve, Leah, Tony, Kamelia, Will, Dina, Mandi, Vivian, Max, Mamta, Rob, Linette, Julia, Walter, Brett, Geoff, Paul, Michael, Megan, and others all joined us as interns. Alyson started on the business side. Jay joined us when he was still in school. Adam started as our social media editor. Julie Z started as Contributors editor. Rylan took over that role after finishing her internship. And many more of you have started in senior positions and taken on more responsibility from there.

We work hard to create an environment in which everyone feels encouraged to continue to develop their skills, experience, and career, and we’re thrilled with the progress so many of you are making.

In this vein, one inspiring story that’s worth telling is Nick Carlson’s.

Nick’s career has progressed at a prodigious rate over the last 6 years./CONTINUESRead More

What does the mayor think about the cover? “She likes it a lot,” her spokesperson tells me.

Omaha Magazine managing editor David Williams writes in an email:

Just as we’ve seen a zillion riffs on Grant Wood’s American Gothic, Edvard Munch’s The Scream, and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, our cover is a tongue-planted-firmly-in-cheek parody. The mayor not only loved the idea but was doubly excited because Bossy Pants is one of her favorite books. She even pointed to a copy of it she keeps in her office when we pitched the idea.

* AP’s Linda Deutsch: “The 1963 civil rights march on Washington was the first major news story I covered and my first front-page byline. I have written a story about that day.” (facebook.com/ldeutsch1)
* “IamA Police Reporter in Flint, MI, US’s most dangerous city.” Flint Journal’s David Harris takes questions on Reddit. (reddit.com)
* Syrian hackers claim responsibility for the New York Times website outage. (washingtonpost.com)
* If you still can’t access nytimes.com, the Times is also publishing at news.nytco.com. (@nytimes)

— via @HuffPostMedia

* An observation: Wall Street Journal always lowers its paywall for stories about the Times being hacked. (online.wsj.com)
* “If you’re a reporter committed to long-form journalism, a blog’s a nuisance,” Michael Miner writes in his piece about Chicago Reporter’s new editor. (chicagoreader.com)
* New York Post’s retooled website — debuting next week — “will be a vastly improved experience for our readers,” says a Post memo. (capitalnewyork.com)
* The last to know? Gannett’s flagship paper, USA Today, gets a confirmation from Gannett that it’s been laying off newspaper staffers. (usatoday.com)
* Former Seattle news anchor Susan Hutchison is elected Washington State Republican Party chair. (seattletimes.com)
* Felix Salmon calls Kara Swisher “the best journalist (so far) of the new millennium.” (blogs.reuters.com)
* Alessandra Stanley says self-absorption is a large part of Keith Olbermann’s appeal. (nytimes.com)
* Dallas Morning News’s Rodger Jones and El Paso Times’s Robert Moore are named Opinion Journalists of the Year by the Association of Opinion Journalists. (opinionjournalists.org)
* Steve Outing: The ease of doing live-streamed mobile video will have a profound effect on how we watch sports of all sorts. (steveouting.com)
* ABC News settles with a man who sued over 2011 “20/20” Internet dating-scam report. (ocweekly.com)
* BuzzFeed hires Sheera Frenkel and Mike Giglio as foreign correspondents. (buzzfeed.com)
* Chinese news portal’s “Major Trends In Aircraft Carrier Development” includes “Battlestar Galactica” spaceships. (scmp.com)
* What’s that guy trimming on the front page of China Daily’s business section? (beijingcream.com)

* What the….?! Former Patch staffer’s lawsuit says she was asked to work from her hospital bed just hours after delivering her baby. (twincities.com)
* New York Times outage is “the result of a malicious external attack.” (nytimes.com)
* Al Jazeera America’s highest rated show last week was “Real Money with Ali Velshi.” It had 54,000 viewers. (mediabistro.com)
* Chicago Newspaper Guild files an unfair labor practice charge against Sun-Times Media for using non-union members from Aggrego to do Guild journalists’ work. (chicagonewsguild.org)

Gannett and Belo press release: “A Second Request [for information about a proposed acquisition] is a standard part of the DOJ review process.”Michelle Leder writes: “I’m always looking for press releases that massage the truth and this one looked like a winner.” Her evidence:

Federal Trade Commission: “The vast majority of deals reviewed by the FTC and the Department of Justice are allowed to proceed after the first, preliminary review.”